A Romance, with Dragons
by Crookshanks22
Summary: Meanwhile, in eastern Europe . . . Charlie Weasley tries to put his life back together after the war. A fairy tale for grownups, with Weasleys galore, Tonks, Remus, Viktor Krum, and plenty of dragons. Written postHBP, refers to deceased characters.
1. The Bedraggled Vampire

**Chapter 1: The Bedraggled Vampire**

The Bedraggled Vampire serves the smoothest butterbeer and the sharpest fire-whiskey in all of Zagreb. It has the grimiest tables and the shiniest floors, the surliest staff and the prettiest girls. Cockroach pasties are on the menu, and vampires get 10 percent off. It is the best wizarding pub in Zagreb, and the worst.

In short, the Bedraggled Vampire is the only wizarding pub in Zagreb, and it is about two stops from the end of the world.

As the steely spring sunshine fades out the western windows, two men sit silently in the dusty barroom. Mihail the bartender flicks a quill haphazardly and inattentively at last month's accounts, which don't add up. Charlie Weasley, Senior Assistant Dragon Keeper at the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility, taps his index finger rhythmically on the rim of an empty brandy glass and stares at the door.

He is sitting at a small, polished table for two along the side wall. He has been sitting there for thirty-seven minutes, and he knows now that she isn't coming. He is not surprised. He has been stood up before. He isn't devastated, either. After all, he barely knows her. It's not like he was in love. Pretending to be in love, perhaps. Wanting to be in love. Wanting not to spend the rest of his life in a dusty, dirty, empty, silent pub in the bombed-out city of Zagreb.

The war is over now, but it hasn't made much difference in Charlie's life. The war was in England, and Charlie was here. The war was in Scotland, and Charlie was here. The war was in Wales, and Charlie was here. Here in grimy pubs, here in a cold, barren bunkhouse, here in whitewashed muddy barns in the mountains of Transylvania.

He didn't mean to sit the war out. He joined the Order of the Phoenix the week it was recalled. He brushed up on defensive spells. He spent his weekends recruiting. Through Quidditch circles and through Hermione Granger, he made contact with Viktor Krum. He liaised with Viktor's secretive little intelligence cell on the rim of the Black Sea. When Ollivander disappeared, he started monitoring the dragon heartstring trade in eastern Europe. After several months and gobs of tedious paperwork, he fingered the wandmaker who was supplying the Romanian and Bulgarian Death Eaters.

Meanwhile, the news from home got grimmer and grimmer. One of his brothers was killed. One of his brothers was savaged by a werewolf. One of his brothers was present the night the last horcrux was destroyed.

Charlie stayed in Romania. He worked, he studied, he eavesdropped in bars. He poured over maps and wandmakers' accounts. He encoded messages to Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore. He decoded messages from Viktor. He hosted Hagrid and Olympe Maxime on their mission to the giants. He sheltered Witherwings from time to time. He nursed wounded owls.

In three years, he never saw a battle. He scarcely raised his wand. The night the last horcrux was destroyed, Charlie was sitting in a whitewashed barn in Romania, preparing slides of Hungarian Horntail dung for the first-year interns.

The war is over now. The Dark Lord is two years gone. The furious tide that swept away his brother, his beloved old headmaster, so much of his pre-war world, is ebbing now. And Charlie remains in Romania, wondering what happened to the last nine years.

All of his surviving brothers are married now: one—insanely, in Charlie's opinion—to a part-veela who can twist him around her little finger and one, scandalously, to a Muggle. He has two nephews so far and two more in the offing. Soon there will be more. One day, he will have quite a lot of nephews.

Because that's what Weasleys do. All the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford. Weasleys marry young and have no money but lots of sons. The Prewett side of the family is exactly the same, except that the Prewetts have daughters too. It's not a bad way to live. Charlie never thought twice about it. It seemed so easy, growing up. He was the normal one in the family. Bill was the smooth, brainy one, Percy the prissy prefect, the twins sly and mischievous, Ron the perpetual toddler trailing after them, but Charlie was the normal one, the nice one, the one who fit in everywhere, the one that everyone liked.

Now all his brothers are married, married and reproducing like mad, and he is sitting before an empty brandy glass in a dusty, dirty, empty, silent pub in the bombed-out city of Zagreb.

Between the Second War and the fall of Communism, Zagreb has taken a beating. Zagreb is a ghost town full of concrete shells of apartment buildings, concrete shells of schools and stores and bus shelters. His mother would have a fit if she knew he was here. But Bucharest is even worse. For most of the time Charlie has lived in Romania, Bucharest has been seething with Death Eaters. In Bucharest, during the war, it was hardly safe to speak to anyone. Every bus driver, every cashier, every lithe young witch about town, every Romanian Ministry of Magic official, almost, was a spy. So Charlie fell into the habit of flying to Zagreb on his days off, and even though the war is over now, he still comes. He has developed a perverse, unsmiling loyalty to the Bedraggled Vampire. It has become the scene of his youth, the scene of his war.

The door opens, and Charlie snaps to attention. He tries to look like a man who's in love, or at least like a man who thinks he's in love, a man who wants to be in love, a man who's willing to try. The door swings forward, and Viktor Krum walks in. Charlie's shoulders slump. Viktor raises a hand in greeting; Charlie nods curtly.

Viktor walks across the room and says in precise, heavily accented English, "I have a letter." He looks at the empty chair. He says calmly, "She isn't coming."

"No," says Charlie, trying to sound resigned. "No, she isn't coming."

Viktor sits. He fishes in the inside pocket of his jacket. "I have a letter," he says, "from your sister-in-law. The girl who broke my heart." This isn't news to Charlie. In the Bedraggled Vampire, Hermione is invariably referred to, in heavily accented English, as "the girl who broke my heart."

"She sent it by that doofus owl," continues Viktor, "the one they call 'Pig.' He zoomed in my vindow this morning vith muddy feathers and fainted on the bearskin rug. So I shook him, and I threw some owl treats at him, and he voke up and gave me my letter. And then I saw he had a letter for you as vell. So I said, I said, 'Pig, do not fly to Romania. My friend Charlie vill not be at vork on a Saturday anyvay. He vill be sulking in a pub somevere, probably in Zagreb. So,' I say, 'Pig, give me the letter for Charlie and you go right back to the Burrow.' And he did, and I am here. Here—" he shoves an envelope across the table—"here is your letter."

Charlie takes it. He says, "Thanks." He does not open the letter. Hermione is, hands down, his favorite of all his motley assortment of sisters-in-law, even though she doesn't know a thing about Quidditch. (None of his sisters-in-law knows a thing about Quidditch.) But Hermione's letters are apt to be long and full of confident, flowery allusions to her personal happiness. Charlie is happy for her, and Charlie is happy for his freckled kid brother, but sometimes he doesn't care to read too much about other people's happiness.

Maybe in the morning.

Mihail the bartender brings Viktor a shot of fire-whiskey before Viktor asks for it. Mihail knows Viktor. Viktor tosses it off and says, "A friend of hers is getting married."

Charlie nods. He is not surprised. Another wedding. That's the way it was, when the war was on, and that's the way it is, now that the war is over. Every month, every letter, another wedding. Just not for him.

"She is very happy for her friend. Myself, I think, though she does not say it, I think she is surprised. Surprised and very happy."

Viktor pulls out his own letter. "The name of Hermy-own-ninny's friend is Ne-fill Long-bo-tome."

Charlie does a double-take. "_Neville Longbottom_?"

"Yes, Ne-fill Long-bo-tome. She writes that it vill be a very big vedding and she says, my friend, that she hopes you vill come. She says the bride and groom vish to celebrate vith a special petting zoo and she asks you, as a friend and a sister-in-law, if you vill vrangle the dragons."


	2. The Transylvanian Dragon Facility

**Chapter 2: The Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility**

At breakfast on Monday morning he tells his coworkers about the dragon petting zoo, and they have a good laugh over it. There are two other Senior Assistant Dragon Keepers at the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility. Slovadan Vasik is local. He had a spotty education, interrupted by book shortages, bread shortages, Floo Powder shortages, and the fall of Communism, but he is a genius with dragons. His family has been in the business for eight generations. Fergal McDiarmuid hales from County Clare, and he speaks with a brogue so thick that it took Charlie two years to learn to understand him. He is lanky, cheerful, and insouciant.

All of the Facility's permanent employees are men except for Antonja, an elderly Squib who rakes out the dragon dung each morning and pots it for export. Most years, there are one or two women among the interns, but they never last long. The Assistant Dragon Keepers, all young men in their twenties and thirties, accept this with a certain fatalism. Slovadan's sister, one of the Facility's hottest prospects, had an unfortunate experience with a Hungarian Horntail, five years back. She left the internship program in her second week and went to work as a law librarian at the Ministry in Bucharest. She still drops by almost every weekend, but she has made it extremely clear that her future career will take place at the Ministry and will not involve fieldwork with dragons.

Slovadan is convinced now that the dragon-keeping gene descends only to boys, not girls.

Everyone else has ruefully acknowledged that the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility is not a good place to meet females--except, of course, for female dragons. There are lots of beautiful, wild, ferocious female dragons.

Charlie, unlike Hagrid, understands that dragons cannot be domesticated—except in the rare instances in which one runs across a dragon who actually _wants_ to be domesticated. They've got one of those right now, an adorable Ukrainian Ironbelly of five tons or so, named Minnie. They named her after Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, who is a personal friend of the Director and happened to be visiting the week the dragon came in. Minnie appeared around the end of the war, badly burnt in the chest and lame in the off-fore, and Charlie and Fergal, Slovadan and the Director between them nursed her back to health. When they tried to release her back onto the reservation, she wouldn't go. Now she skulks around the far side of the mountain abutting the Research Facility, strolling into the farmyard occasionally for dragon treats. (Rabbits are her favorite.) They still don't know how she got injured.

After Charlie and Slovadan read through Fergal's weekend log, after the three of them sit through their brief ritual Monday morning meeting with the Director, Fergal departs for his belated weekend leave and Charlie carries his broom out to the courtyard. Slovadan is donning waterproof boots preparatory to wading into the barns that house the sick and injured dragons; Charlie has the morning field survey and Slovadan the afternoon. He kicks off and sails up through the shimmering cool morning air, over the heart-stoppingly lovely jagged green peaks of the Carpathian range. He checks on the Ukrainian Ironbellies, since Fergal won't be doing it this morning, and then he sails over to the northwestern corner of the reservation that shelters the Hungarian Horntails.

The Tranyslvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility is the principal dragon reservation in eastern Europe. It is generally acknowledged to be one of the best dragon reservations in the world. Its barns have sheltered every variety of dragon known to wizard; just last week, a team of Australian handlers brought in a rare Antipodean Opaleye. But the reservation supports only the three species of dragon indigenous to eastern Europe: Romanian Longhorns, which are Slovadan's purview; Ukrainian Ironbellies, which are Fergal's; and Hungarian Horntails, which are Charlie's.

The reservation covers more than two hundred square miles in the wildest, loveliest, most inaccessible section of the Carpathian range. The Muggle inhabitants are few and poor; if they see dragons from time to time, they don't talk about it. All the Dragon Keepers spend a lot of time on their brooms, but Charlie spends the most, partly because he is the most adept flier and partly because the Hungarian Horntails reside in the remotest corner of the reservation.

There is nothing, simply nothing, that can rival the felicity of viewing a healthy, full-grown, spike-tailed, fire-breathing Hungarian Horntail from the air. The vision of sunlight glinting off the metallic grey scales of a six-ton Ukrainian Ironbelly comes close perhaps, but even Ukrainian Ironbellies seem a bit pedestrian compared to the wild majesty of Hungarian Horntails.

At lunch Charlie sits with the visiting mother of one of the interns and tells her, in the pidgin German that he has learned, by trial and error, from Viktor Krum, about the jagged green peaks of the Carpathian range and the strange beauty of Hungarian Horntails.

She does not appear convinced.

After lunch Slovadan flies out to look at the Romanian Longhorns. The Director takes one set of interns on a medical round through the barns, and Charlie takes the other set of interns into the lab to look at Hungarian Horntail scales and slivers of Hungarian Horntail dung under a microscope. They compare the scales to Ukrainian Ironbelly scales and the slivers of dung to the slivers of Ukrainian Ironbelly dung they examined last week, and they discuss the Muggle concepts of "genus" and "species." Charlie feels a little sheepish, as he always does when he leads this discussion, because coming from a pureblood family, he never took a Muggle biology class, not even when he was ten years old, and he has only the most tenuous understanding of "genus" and "species."

But of course none of the interns knows anything about it either. And neither does the Director. That's why the Director always foists this lesson on Charlie.

It's spring, and these interns have been here for several months. They don't know a thing about Muggle biology but they do know something, by now, about dragons. As usual, nearly half the class has already left due to injuries, general terror, or the gnawing loneliness of living in a narrow whitewashed bunkhouse on a dragon reservation in Romania. Several more will leave before they qualify for Dragon Keeper certificates. In some years, only one or two of the interns stay through the twenty-two months it takes to qualify.

In the evening, Slovadan kicks off his boots and puts his large, smelly feet up on the low-slung mantle in his bedroom. He tunes the radio to a station emitting noise that sounds like a banshee wailing, and he pulses to the beat as he plays chess against himself with ancient and argumentative pieces that, he insists, a Gypsy relative brought from India. The next room is empty; Fergal isn't back yet. Charlie suspects that he will be sleeping in a Muggle bed tonight. He has worked with Fergal for seven years, and he knows his ways. Charlie retrieves his broomstick from the third bedroom, carries it to the muddy courtyard, and kicks off.

He flies. He skirts the Romanian Longhorns, skims over the Ukrainian Ironbellies, dodges his beloved Hungarian Horntails. He dips between the peaks and flies fleetly into the sunset. To the south he sees the paltry twinkling lights of Bucharest. As night falls, he stops short of Mount Moldoveanu, cuts into a beautiful nosedive, brings himself up short, and zooms back, as if chasing a snitch, towards the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility.

Sometimes he wonders if he should leave Romania. Life is simple here. In some ways it's dull. In some ways it's barren. There is no longer any intelligence work to do late at night, by flickering _lumos _spells. There are no longer any strange, dear visitors from home cutting through Transylvania on doomed missions to the giants. There are no regular Quidditch matches; there are no English bookstores. There are no parents, no brothers, no sisters-in-law. No friends from Hogwarts. There are no women who want him, who want to stay with him, who want to marry him and have freckled, red-haired children. There is only the occasional haggardly haunting Croatian witch who will make a date once or twice and then, inevitably, stand him up in a bar, there to be discovered by a wryly amused Viktor Krum.

Charlie is not yet thirty, but his time is running out. The wizarding world is small, the options few. Wizards marry young or not at all. The lucky ones marry their classmates, fresh from Hogwarts. They marry the junior assistants they meet over lunch at the junior assistants' table in the Ministry cafeteria. They marry the Trainee Healers they fall for in the first-year spell damage class at St. Mungo's. They marry their third cousins, their second cousins, sometimes their first cousins. With great consistency, they marry young or not at all. Because the wizarding world is small and closed, and there's nothing to wait for.

There are an extraordinarily large number of bachelors and spinsters in the wizarding world.

Very few of them, however, are Weasleys.

So sometimes he thinks he ought to go home. He thinks how happy Mum would be. He thinks about Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and playing Quidditch with his brothers in the backyard of the Burrow.

Except they're one short now. And besides, all his brothers are married. They have jobs, they have homes, they have sons.

And the jobs he could get at home aren't very enticing. Because the fact is, Common Welsh Greens are pretty dull when you're accustomed to Hungarian Horntails. And the MacFusty clan has all the Hebridean Black jobs locked up, just as they have for the last five hundred years.

Scandinavia is an option. He's been to Norway a couple times. Norwegian Ridgebacks are all right. He could probably get to like Norwegian Ridgebacks. He knows a fellow at the Lapland Norwegian Ridgeback Reservation, up on the Arctic Circle. Maybe he should send him an owl. Maybe tomorrow, he thinks without enthusiasm. Maybe next week.

The fact is, he's been here nine years, and he's put down roots.

The fact is, he doesn't want to leave Minnie. He doesn't want to leave Slovadan and Fergal. He doesn't want to leave his Hungarian Horntails. He doesn't want to leave Transylvania and the heart-stoppingly lovely jagged green peaks of the Carpathian range.

He just doesn't want to live here alone.


	3. The Burrow

**Chapter 3: The Burrow**

Going home is even harder than Charlie anticipated.

The rain comes down in sheets, and he has a miserable flight. The Cauldron Cakes that Slovadan's sister baked last weekend crumble into gooey mush long before he crosses the French border. He is levitating a large duffle bag behind him, which slows him down. But there's no alternative. The British Floo Network is not connected to the Romanian Floo network, which is, in any case, unreliable. Some wizards would apparate, but Charlie has never felt entirely confident about apparition, and he doesn't want to risk it with a duffle bag. Distracted as he is, he would probably go and splinch himself.

Besides, he likes to fly.

Charlie has already discovered, to his chagrin, that Hermione wasn't joking about the dragon petting zoo. It isn't every day, or even every decade, that a Bones marries a Longbottom. Susan's parents and Neville's grandmother have planned a wedding on an almost royal scale, and they have their hearts set on dragons. Charlie did at least manage to talk them out of an ill-advised plan to import a Hungarian Horntail. He recommended Common Welsh Greens, but there's been an outbreak of dragon pox on the Welsh reservation, so Augusta Longbottom settled at last on Swedish Shortsnouts, which, while ferocious, are still tamer than any of the eastern European varieties.

At the Burrow, Charlie is received warmly by his assembled kin, enjoying a chaotic family dinner the night before Neville's big day. His short, stout mother throws her arms around him, soggy as he is, and reprimands him for not apparating. He gently disengages himself, fishes in his damp duffle bag, and hands her a vial of dragon's blood, her favorite, and inordinately expensive, brand of oven cleaner. Her tears turn to smiles.

The Burrow is, as usual, overflowing, but the gender ratio has shifted. Women crowd the rooms. Fleur is lounging around the living room in swishy, gilt-trimmed satin maternity robes, with her feet up on the ottoman, giving orders for chocolates, tea, pillows, and ice water freely to every Weasley who passes by, although most of the time Bill is the only one who listens. Jenny, whose baby is due a month before Fleur's and who has perhaps a better right to the ottoman, is not making a fuss. Jenny never makes a fuss. She is a Muggle, plain-faced and sweet, and full of constant quiet wonder about the wizarding world. She is the last sort of girl that Charlie imagined George would marry, but he likes her better every time he sees her. Jenny's parents run a stationery shop in a village near the Burrow, and she spent years waiting on customers. She fits right in now, in Diagon Alley, in spite of all the raised eyebrows. She is even starting to take an interest in Quidditch.

It must be awfully hard to be a Muggle, though. As best Charlie can make out, being a Muggle makes the simplest things, such as cooking and transportation, extremely complicated. And then there is the whole issue of eckeltricity. In the world that Jenny comes from, nothing whatsoever seems to work without recourse to plugs and eckeltricity. Arthur is fascinated, of course. Arthur adores Jenny.

Charlie is just glad he was spared the burden of such dependence.

Bill and Fleur's son Freddie has pulled himself up on a chair. He toddles across the room, shrieking and waving his arms, and Fleur beams with pride. Charlie stands Percy's freckled, red-haired son up in his lap. This boy is, predictably, named Percy Jr. He is six months old and he is—as both Percy and Penelope will gladly explain to anyone who gives them half an opening—exceptionally bright. To be sure, he is evincing profound academic curiosity about the contents of Charlie's robe pockets. Even now, he is drooling on the handle of Charlie's wand.

Charlie sets Percy Jr. down in his lap, wipes the wand, and hands the baby a gurdyroot to chew on instead. "I guess there'll be a couple more this winter," he says quietly.

Hermione giggles. Ron looks extremely pleased with himself. "Three," he says. "There'll be three."

Charlie looks from Ron to Hermione. "Oh, and when were you planning to tell me that?" he asks. "That didn't quite make it into the letters to Romania."

Hermione takes Ron's hand. "We only just found out ourselves," she says.

Charlie looks from Hermione to Ron, his kid brother. They look very, very young. Calm, confident, eager. Loving parents in the making. By wizarding standards, this is not unusual. By wizarding standards, this is the right time to start their family. This is the age at which his parents had Bill. But Charlie is seven and a half years older than Ron, and to him, his brother and his brother's wife just look so very, very young.

* * *

It is late. The reluctant June twilight has at last faded over the fields, the last cup of tea has been drunk, the last infant has been calmed, and the Burrow is still. Charlie can't sleep. Sighing, he heaves himself out of bed and clambers down three flights of stairs to the living room. Insomnia seldom plagues him in Romania.

To his surprise, the living room is not empty. Hermione sits curled in an armchair, reading a slender hardcover book by the light of her wand. She nods to him silently. Ron is fast asleep, still fully dressed, on the threadbare sofa.

Charlie picks through the reading matter on the coffee table. Outdated copies of _Witch Weekly _and _Which Broomstick_. The spring catalog for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. A bound copy of Percy's first report on cauldron bottoms, carefully preserved by Molly. _Controlling Tantrums: A Mother's Magic Touch_. _An Elementary Guide to Quantum Mechanics_. _An Introduction to String Theory_. Charlie doesn't even know what string theory is. He flips it open; it looks like science. Penelope is—most unusually, but that's Penelope—apparating to Oxford in the autumn, to read for a degree in physics. It must be hers. Curiously, he bends his head to see the cover of Hermione's book.

The title is, _Men Who Love Dragons Too Much_.

She sees him read it. He flushes.

"Hermione," he says quietly, "why do you read that muck?"

"It's not mine," she says defensively. "It's your mother's. I'm just reading it because I couldn't sleep, and I thought it looked funny."

Oh. That makes it so much better.

"It's—well, she worries, Charlie. You know, she worries that you'll never settle down. She worries that you don't want to get married. I mean, I don't. I think you have a right to do whatever you want to do. I don't like dragons very much myself, but I do see how someone else could find them—well, er, interesting. And I don't think that everyone necessarily has to get married. I mean, some people want to and some people don't. It's a personal choice. I'm not going to give you a hard time if you'd rather just be single and travel around and keep dragons."

"Hermione," he says, "it's not that I don't _want_ to."

"Oh. Well, I'm not going to ask you nosy questions. I'm sure you'll tell us about your love life when you want to. Bill and Penelope and Ron and I all agreed that we're not going to give you a hard time about it. And your dad's very proud of you. I know he is. It's just your mother who—"

"Hermione," he says. "You don't understand what it's like. No one who hasn't been to Romania can possibly understand what it's like."

"I know, Charlie," she says soothingly, absently, looking over his shoulder at her rumpled husband. "I know."

He knows she doesn't know.

Ron snores on the sofa, heedless of this tense exchange between his brother and his pregnant wife. Nine years ago, Ron was a little boy. Nine years ago, Ron and Ginny, and sometimes even the twins, listened star-struck and spellbound to Charlie's tales of life on a dragon reservation, to his first experiences of harvesting horns and clipping talons. Nine years flew by. Ron grew up, left school, fought a war, got married, and went into business. Charlie just kept harvesting horns and clipping talons.

Fergal, in his late thirties, has been a Dragon Keeper for seventeen years. He spent four years in the Andes, tending Peruvian Vipertooths. He has been to Australia and to China. He has lived a life of travel, adventure, and first-degree burns.

This is what Charlie has to look forward to.

There was a time when he did look forward to it.


	4. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry

**Chapter 4: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**

Outdoors, in brilliant sunshine, on the rolling green lawns of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Neville and Susan are married with a degree of pomp and circumstance appropriate to Balkan royalty. In lieu of flower girls, the wedding procession includes a specially imported sphinx, which runs amok and claws the dress robes off a cowering Cornelius Fudge. Charlie pulls his wand and rushes forward, with a score of other scarred and sunburnt guests; it's easy to pick out the ones who've made a career of working with magical beasts. Shouting and brandishing their wands, the motley assortment of wedding guests at last coordinate Stunners and wrestle the animal to the ground. An athletic young witch in a slinky dress, now torn at the hem, covers the sphinx's heavy talon with her wand, hand quivering slightly, as Cornelius Fudge crawls out from beneath the outsized claw.

At the lavish outdoor reception Charlie is seated next to his old schoolfriend Nymphadora Tonks. She is negotiating a high chair between two dinner chairs as her bookish werewolf husband spins their shrieking thirteen-month-old daughter on the grass. Charlie looks at her and realizes how long it's been.

How little he has to show for the last nine years.

Under the influence of a couple of glasses of dark, dry, elf-brewed wine from the Longbottom cellar, Tonks becomes expansive, and she asks about his love life. As usual, she gets right to the point.

"So what are you waiting for?" she says.

"I'm waiting to meet the right woman." Charlie grimaces. "Or even a not obviously wrong one. That would do."

She laughs. She says, "I think you could find a not obviously wrong one anywhere, mate. Even in Romania."

He shakes his head. "Tonks, you don't know what it's like. No one who hasn't lived there can imagine what it's like. Some weeks I literally do not see a woman to speak to, except for Antonja and Marina."

Antonja she apparently remembers from his occasional chatty letters. He wrote more frequently when he first went out, when he still felt like life was happening to him. When he still had things to say. She asks, "Who's Marina?"

"Slovadan's sister." She raises her eyebrows. "A friend," he says firmly. "A friend."

"That's a good start," says Tonks.

Charlie shakes his head. "I've known her almost as long as I've known Slovadan. I've known her since she was sixteen. If there was anything there, I think, by now, we'd know. Besides," he says, "she doesn't speak much English and I don't really speak Romanian, so there's not much we can say to each other."

"That didn't stop Bill and Fleur."

Charlie chuckles. "That was pure animal magnetism, that was."

"And that's not what you're looking for?"

Charlie sighs. He says, a little sadly, "I'm looking for a girl who likes dragons and Quidditch. Who wouldn't mind raising a large family on a modest income. Who can put up with my parents and my siblings and my in-laws." He says, a little wistfully, "I'm looking for a girl who can fly."

"And you want to live in Transylvania?" she says.

He hesitates. Not for long. He says sadly, wistfully, honestly, "Yes. Yes, I do."

* * *

The dragons that Mrs. Longbottom at last obtained, after much dispatching of owls and pulling of strings, are as well-suited to residence in a petting zoo as any dragons can be to such a bizarre endeavor. One is so elderly and arthritic that Charlie merely hopes it won't keel over and die before the reception ends. The other one is far too young to leave its mother, and Charlie briefly contemplates penning an indignant missive to the Swedish Shortsnout Reservation. That's one place where he won't be applying for a job.

As the dragons are few, there is also a hippogriff, and a familiar one: Buckbeak, a.k.a. Witherwings, lent specially by the Order of the Phoenix. Buckbeak is plainly rather bored with the proceedings. He curls up in a patch of shade and goes to sleep, ignoring the stream of visitors eager to stroke his feathers. The elderly dragon follows Buckbeak's example, and the baby dragon noses happily in a patch of mud, splattering it on the lace-trimmed, pin-tucked, and dress-suited children who happen by.

Charlie is surprised to discover how easy his ridiculous assignment has turned out to be, and he is still more surprised when the young witch who helped stun the sphinx strolls up and asks him if he needs help with the dragons.

"Does it look like I need help?" he asks, half indignant, half amused.

She shrugs. "No, but you never know. I didn't think anyone was daft enough to want a dragon petting zoo at a wedding. I told Mrs. Longbottom she was asking for trouble—particularly if she went with Horntails. I couldn't talk her out of it, but at least she accepted my suggestion about the Shortsnouts. I work with hippogriffs," she adds, by way of explanation. "Psst—Beaky!" She bows.

Buckbeak lifts his sleepy head and nuzzles her affectionately.

Charlie takes a second look.

She is short and sturdily built, just as he is, with a muscular, outdoorsy look. Dark blonde hair is piled on top of her head, and a Muggle evening dress of violet chiffon sits uneasily on her shoulders. She has the bearing of a tomboy, an athlete, not a society girl. A thick raised scar runs down the right side of her face from her temple to the dimple in her chin. Scar tissue buckles over the corner of her right eye, and he knows without asking, without knowing how he knows, that she has no vision in that eye.

Part of him finds the scar repulsive, and part of him finds it fascinating. Erotic. It forms the oddest contrast to the blonde Hebe knot and the violet chiffon.

"It wasn't a hippogriff," she says, reading his thoughts.

"I'm sorry," says Charlie, humiliated. "I didn't mean to stare."

"I don't care," says the girl, "but it wasn't a hippogriff. I fell on the blade of a sword." She pauses. "I'm Katie," she says as an afterthought.

"I'm Charlie."

"I know."

He feels taken aback. Was he supposed to know her?

"I remember watching the Quidditch matches, my first year at Hogwarts," she says. "You were brilliant."

"Thanks," says Charlie, who still can't place her. "Which house were you in?"

"Gryffindor."

Oh.

"I was a Chaser," continues Katie.

Oh, oh, oh.

"Starting my second year."

Oh, lord.

She was on the team with Fred and George, then. With Fred and George and Ron and Ginny. And Harry. They must all have known her well. And if she made the team second year—which Charlie did, of course, but not many others—if she made the team second year, that she must have been pretty damn good.

She must think he's an idiot, a self-absorbed idiot, not even to know her name, when she spent six years playing Quidditch for Gryffindor with his four youngest siblings.

He finds himself staring wordlessly at this girl he ought to have known. Four hours later, distracted and chilly as the rising night wind whips through the thin fabric of his dress robes, he is still staring, over the Swedish Shortsnout crates and the shoulders of the departing guests, at the blonde Hebe knot, at the violet chiffon, at the scar.


	5. Hogsmeade

**Chapter 5: Hogsmeade**

Tonks and Remus live in a cozy, though shabby, bungalow in the village of Hogsmeade. Three days after Neville and Susan's wedding, the moon is full and Remus is gone. Charlie goes to Hogsmeade for tea with Tonks and Stella. He is curious to see how she's managing. Tonks is as individual and independent as she always was, with curious oceans of reserve underlying her carefree manner. She is not the sort to mind a little time each month alone. But the strain, he can see, is very great. She is always on tenterhooks at the full moon.

Most of the time, Tonks is an Auror, even if she gets stuck with deskwork more than suits her taste. Remus, most of the time, is a stay-at-home father. The Werewolf Regulatory Act is still in effect, and there isn't much else he can do. He is writing a book about dark creatures. He is romping happily amid scrolls of parchment on redcaps and hinkypunks. He has so far avoided writing a line about werewolves.

In the bungalow's cramped kitchen, Tonks prepares tea with her usual lack of finesse. Motherhood has not made her domestic. After the kitchen floor floods twice, Tonks and Stella retreat to the living room while Charlie boils the kettle and steeps the leaves. He carries the tea tray into the front room and sets it on the coffee table. Tonks grins wickedly and says, "Those Romanian witches don't know what they're missing."

Bemused, Charlie shakes his head. He pours out as Stella snatches the tube of digestive biscuits and starts rolling it around on the floor.

"I thought you were getting along with Katie well, at the wedding," says Tonks, plonking herself down on the carpet.

Charlie thinks for a minute. He says, "She—she's nice."

"Just nice?"

"I didn't recognize her. She knew who I was, right enough."

"That doesn't sound like an irreparable mistake."

"I probably met her at some point, when we were kids," says Charlie regretfully. "And I did remember the name. Eventually. After I thought about it. There were three girls on the Gryffindor team with Fred and George. They all played Chaser. The name that stuck in my mind was Angelina—she's the one Fred used to talk about. But he did mention Katie, once or twice."

"I don't think Katie ever made quite as much of an impression on Fred as she seems to have made on you."

"I made a jolly bad impression on her."

"How do you know that?"

He shrugs. Tonks feeds half a chocolate digestive biscuit to Stella. Charlie looks at the pair of them, momentarily green with envy, and looks away.

"Her parents live in the south of England," says Tonks, practically. "Not far from the Burrow. You could Floo her."

To Tonks this seems simple. Not to Charlie. To Charlie, flooing Katie Bell seems far more complex and problematic than asking for a date with a Croatian witch who doesn't know English or German or Romanian or any of the other tongues that Charlie has more or less learned to speak, haltingly and ungrammatically, on the dragon reservation. Katie Bell is English, and she knows most of his family. She's known them for years. Katie Bell plays Quidditch, and Quidditch circles are small. Katie Bell works in hippogriffs, for heaven's sake, and he'll probably end up teamed with her next time he gets stuck hosting a petting zoo.

This would have been so much easier if he had met her years ago. If he'd been in England, hanging around Hogwarts, talking to his siblings, watching Quidditch. If he hadn't been off in Romania, chasing dragons.

He stutters out a question. "Do you—well—don't you think I'm—er—maybe a bit old for her?"

Tonks laughs. "Yeah," she says, "I've heard that one before. Correct me if I'm wrong, Charlie, but you're still a couple years shy of thirty. You're not too old for anyone who's grown-up." She half-heartedly wipes Stella's face, which is artistically smeared with chocolate. Like father, like daughter. "Charlie, why don't you tell me what you're really thinking?"

He looks perplexed.

"Well," says Tonks, "it would save time." Still he doesn't answer. She hands him Stella and carries the teacups to the kitchen. Charlie watches her, dandling Stella on his lap. She is walking oddly, her weight thrown backwards. She is already pregnant again. He didn't see it at the wedding, but now, watching her from behind, he can see it. There will be another child by Christmas.

He had a crush on her once, the year he was fourteen. She used to morph herself for Quidditch matches: red hair, whiskers, and tufted cat's ears when she was cheering Gryffindor; blue hair, beak, and talons when she was cheering Ravenclaw; canary blonde and a badger's snout when she was cheering Hufflepuff. Most of the kids thought she was nuts, but Charlie thought she was funny, and he had a tongue-tied crush on her for six months or so. Later, when they were almost grown-up, they got to be friends.

Now she is married. Now she has a child a year old, and another on the way. Now she's an Auror. Now she's a veteran of a dazzlingly grim war that will go down in the history books to be memorized and dissected and agonized over by generations of future students of Professor Binns, while Charlie, who is three months her senior, is still chasing dragons in Romania. And wondering what happened to the last nine years.

"She was in the war, wasn't she?" says Charlie when Tonks comes back.

Tonks looks startled. For her, this is a non sequitur. Tonks didn't realize they were still having a conversation about Katie. But she says, "Yes, since you ask, yes, I think she was. I don't know much about it, but she was around Hogwarts sometimes, doing errands for Minerva McGonagall. She was still in school when the war started, of course. I'm talking mainly about the last year."

Charlie is silent. Stella, sensing the tension, crumbles a digestive biscuit into his lap.

Tonks says quietly, "I don't know what she was doing, exactly. Something with hippogriffs, but it may have been something more. She was in St. Mungo's for weeks, just before the war ended. I don't know why."

They are silent for a few moments. Tonks says softly, apologetically, "I don't know how she got the scar."

"She fell on the blade of a sword," says Charlie.

Tonks looks at him. Stella fusses. Tonks picks her up and arranges her on her lap and looks at him. She says softly, almost inaudibly, "You got a long way, didn't you, in one afternoon."


	6. Giacomo Maggi Magico's, Diagon Alley

**Chapter 6: Giacomo Maggi-Magico's, Diagon Alley**

The following day, Tonks's head pops up in the Burrow's kitchen fire, and she asks for Charlie. She asks him when he's leaving, and he says Sunday. She says, "Great." She says, "Meet us for dinner tomorrow night." She says, "Remember where Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlor used to be, back when we were teenagers? An Italian wizard took it over, and he's put in a pasta place that's rather good. Beats cooking, anyway." She says, "Seven o'clock."

Charlie says, obediently, "Okay." There's really nothing else one can say to Tonks when she's in a certain mood.

* * *

Giacomo Maggi-Magico's Restaurant is crowded when he arrives, but there is no sign of Tonks, Remus, or Stella. Charlie is precisely on time, but he didn't expect to be the first, not if Remus was coming. He scans the room twice, and his eyes light on Katie, sitting alone on a stool at the bar. She waves tentatively. He walks over to her.

"How are you?" he asks.

"I'm fine," she says. "I'm meeting friends, but they aren't here yet."

"Neither are mine," says Charlie.

"Mine should be easy to spot," says Katie. "Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin?"

Oh. Charlie opens his mouth and shuts it. "I'm meeting them too."

Katie looks startled, then embarrassed. Then she laughs.

Charlie says the first thing that pops into his head. "You know a lot about dragons."

"I read up," says Katie, nodding. "That's what I supposed to be doing, you see."

He cocks his head.

"I was supposed to be interning on a dragon reservation. You've probably heard of it. The Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility? It's in Romania."

"I've heard of it," says Charlie.

"That was my original career plan, you see. Dragons. Professor Grubbly-Plank put me in touch with the director, and I got accepted early, contingent on my NEWT grades of course, but that shouldn't have been a problem."

This information sinks in slowly. Charlie says quietly, "You didn't come."

"No."

"You changed your mind?" he asks. He has heard this story a score of times, from a score of no-show interns.

"No, I—" begins Katie, but she breaks off. She gestures helplessly with her hands.

He senses there's more coming, and he doesn't interrupt.

"I got Imperiused," she says after a minute, in a far-away voice, looking over his shoulder at the crowded restaurant. "I was still at school. I went into the Three Broomsticks with a friend one Hogsmeade weekend, and I got Imperiused, by someone else who had been Imperiused, too. I was given an opal necklace to take to Albus Dumbledore. Absurd, really, but when you're Imperiused you don't ask questions. But then I—I touched the thing, through a hole in my glove. I spun in the air, fell, got knocked out, and woke up six months later in St. Mungo's."

She doesn't know it, but Charlie has heard this story before. He heard it years ago, at some family gathering, from Ron and Hermione.

He just didn't know the girl was Katie.

And of course he didn't know that she was supposed to be interning at the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility.

"I was so happy to be back," says Katie. "I missed most of my seventh year. I was so, so happy to be back. But I wasn't really prepared to take my NEWTs, and that was worrisome. Then Albus Dumbledore was killed, and exams got postponed. I studied all summer and took my NEWTs in the autumn. By then, things were looking bad, and I'd been ill so long, my parents didn't want me going far from home. They thought I would be safer in Britain. But there aren't any really first-class dragon training programs in Britain, so I had to give up on that. I just did a one-year certificate in hippogriffs."

"Were you in the war?" says Charlie quietly. "I mean, after—I didn't mean—"

"I know what you mean," says Katie. "Sort of." She lowers her voice. "Have you ever heard of an organization called the Order of the Phoenix?"

"I've heard of it," says Charlie.

"I thought you might have," says Katie. "I mean, if you're friends with Tonks and Remus—and, of course, you're a Weasley—I mean, I know your father—"

"Were you in the Order of the Phoenix?" asks Charlie quietly. By now, he is starting to realize how much happened in England that he never knew, how much he was never told. By now, he is past being surprised.

"No. No, nothing like that. I was too young. I left school just a year before the war ended, and then I went into the hippogriff program. But I did odd jobs for the Order from time to time. Beaky—Buckbeak—the hippogriff at the wedding, you know—was working for the Order, so to speak, during the war. I used to deliver Beaky to wherever the Order needed him, especially when Hagrid was away. That's why—well, that's why I got in the way."

She takes the index finger of her right hand, and she runs it down the length of the scar, from the mark on her forehead to the scar tissue puckered over the eye that won't quite open to the dimple in her chin. Even though it's only the second time he's met her, he knows this is a trademark gesture. He knows he will be seeing this gesture hundreds and thousands of times.

"I fell on the blade of a sword. I was waiting in Professor McGonagall's office, with Buckbeak, the night the second Battle of Hogwarts broke out. I was alone and I heard the noise, but I didn't know what it was. I waited and waited, and a Death Eater smashed the door in. Almost before I realized what was happening, he grabbed Godric Gryffindor's sword from its case and attacked me. He kicked me and slashed me, and I fell on the blade of the sword. And then—I don't understand exactly—but the sword made a decision. It turned a blunt edge to my face and it stopped."

Wordlessly, she fingers the scar. One side overlaps the other. Two thin sheets of overlapping skin, straight down the right side of her face. He can see exactly where the sword fell, exactly where it stopped. Exactly where it sliced the corner of her eye.

He says, "I didn't know swords could make decisions."

She says ruefully, "Neither did I."

He thinks, there was a powerful lot of magic in that old sword.

She says sheepishly, "So that's my war story. I always seem to get in the way and get clobbered. What about you?"

He shrugs. "I don't have one."

She looks skeptical. She says, "How did you know about the Order of the Phoenix?"

"Oh," says Charlie, embarrassed. "Oh, well, I was in it. But I didn't really do much."

Again, she looks skeptical.

"I was out in Romania."

"But I always heard—"

Well, yes, of course she heard. That is what everyone says. Everyone knows that the Balkans and the Black Sea were seething with Death Eaters. It was not as romantic as it sounds.

"Conditions were so bad we couldn't take risks," explains Charlie. "Conditions were so bad we couldn't risk any sort of battle at all. We had to keep our heads down. I funneled intelligence, I hosted spies, I did a bit of intelligence work myself. But I don't have any war stories. We couldn't risk a war out there. We just kept our heads down."

Katie smiles ruefully. She says, "Sounds a lot more useful than getting Imperiused and spending six months in St. Mungo's." She says, "Sounds a lot more useful than standing around an empty office and falling on the blade of a sword." Her voice is tinged with something like envy.

"Charlie!"

It is Tonks. Remus follows her, carrying Stella in a backpack, which she has almost outgrown. They are twenty minutes late, and since Remus is never twenty minutes late _anywhere_, Charlie knows it's Tonks's doing. And he knows she did it on purpose. Tonks is rarely late by accident, but she does all sorts of daft things on purpose.

She wanted him to run into Katie.

* * *

They linger over dinner, the four of them, chatting lazily, as if they've known each other all their lives. The wizarding world is small, the options few. Katie and Charlie have only just met, but they have shared references, shared memories, shared friends. Stella eats half a roll and two strands of spaghetti, then loops several more strands of spaghetti round her wrist in the form of a bracelet. She makes another spaghetti bracelet for Katie. She falls asleep with her head on her highchair.

As soon as the check is paid, Tonks and Remus disappear, as young parents are wont to do, amid flurried references to belated bedtimes and a welter of unspoken tact. Charlie and Katie linger over coffee, cup after cup, until the waitwizard tells them that Giacomo Maggi-Magico's is closing now. At last they stroll out into Diagon Alley, dark and damp with the scent of approaching rain.

"How are you getting home?" he asks.

"Oh," she says, slightly surprised. "Oh, well, I guess I'll just apparate." She does not sound eager to go.

"I wish I had known you before the war," says Charlie softly, not quite looking at her. "Or during the war. Or even last month, or last week."

"Why not now?" says Katie.

With the tip of his index finger, Charlie touches the mark on her forehead. He trails his finger down the scar tissue buckled over the corner of her eye, the dark line on her cheek, to the dimple in her chin. He kisses her awkwardly. The fact is, he's a little out of practice. But she relaxes into his arms. Their noses bump, and it starts to rain. They stand there, in a damp, shadowy corner of Diagon Alley, kissing slowly and awkwardly.

"Katie," says Charlie huskily, "let's elope."

She is silent, and his heart sinks to the pavement. He wasn't serious, of course. At least, not entirely. He was trying to be dashing, romantic, exciting, the way a Dragon Keeper should be. As usual, it has backfired.

"Let's just elope for a day or two," says Katie quietly, "and see how it goes."

His heart springs back to his chest. "Where do you want to go?"

"Transylvania."


	7. Transylvania

**Chapter 7: Transylvania**

"If I had known she was coming," says Slovadan, "I could have aired out one of the bedrooms. If I had known she was coming, Antonja could have washed some sheets. If you had sent me an owl."

"She can stay at the Hermitage," says Charlie.

Slovadan rolls his eyes, wryly amused.

When the war ended, when the Order of the Phoenix was dissolved, Charlie needed a new project. The new project became the Hermitage. It was once a tumble-down Muggle peasants' hovel, on the edge of the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility's main compound. Charlie took it in hand, rebuilt the walls, repaired the roof, painted it inside and out, and converted it to magic. The last of these tasks was simplified by the fact that the Hermitage had never had running water or eckeltricity in the first place. Only the ground floor is done, a single bedroom and a parlor with a kitchen running behind them in what was originally a lean-to. The cobwebbed first floor, Charlie has scarcely touched. But the Hermitage's sloping, chalet-like roof is removable, just like the Burrow's roof, facilitating the addition of more floors whenever it should become necessary or convenient to do so. The Director thinks the Hermitage is charming, and he often borrows it for a night or two to house distinguished visitors.

Slovadan and Fergal, on the other hand, know exactly what the Hermitage is about. It has been the source of a great deal of teasing. Fergal calls it "the Dollhouse." Marina Vasik toured the Hermitage one blustery autumn afternoon and said, hands on her hips, "Well, at least you're planning ahead. Slovadan isn't going to get married _ever_." And Slovadan said, "No, absolutely not, not while I have my baby sister to look after." Upon which Marina pointed out that she was twenty-three years old and was earning more than Slovadan was, at least on paper. (The Romanian Ministry of Magic is bankrupt at the moment, so it is not actually, literally, paying her.) So it's hardly a secret, the Hermitage.

To Charlie, it is patently obvious that Katie must be lodged in the Hermitage. He walks her over there and shows her around. She thanks him, but on the whole she seems more interested in touring the reservation.

"You can fly?" asks Charlie.

"I can fly."

Slovadan looks skeptical, remembering the Hungarian Horntail that knocked Marina off her broom. But Katie sounds like a woman who knows what she's doing, and Charlie takes her at her word. He hands her a broom. They kick off.

They fly. They skirt the Romanian Longhorns, skim over the Ukrainian Ironbellies, dodge Charlie's beloved Hungarian Horntails. They dip between the peaks and fly fleetly through the foothills. To the south they see the ragged industrial rooftops of Bucharest. She chases him; he chases her. They loop and whirl around each other, playing in mid-air among the vast skies east of Mount Moldoveanu. The air is so crisp it burns. As the sun begins to move down the horizon, they cuts into beautiful nosedives, bring themselves up short, and zoom back towards the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility.

Before dinner, he takes her around the mountain to meet Minnie. Minnie stands in the grassy courtyard abutting her favorite cave, the sunlight glinting off her metallic gray scales, deep red eyes glowing in the evening sun, chewing up a deer carcass that Slovadan dropped off earlier. Minnie is ambivalent about people; she loves her caretakers but fears strangers. Still, she stands her ground, eying Katie with anxious curiosity, crushing deer bones in her teeth.

Charlie is holding Katie's right hand in his left and two dead rabbits in his right. He nudges her and hands her a dead rabbit. Katie accepts it happily. She waits patiently until she catches Minnie's eye. She tosses it to her and Minnie catches the rabbit's ears in her teeth. Minnie loves rabbits. She sniffs appreciatively, chewing and burping. Katie reaches out gently, gently, and strokes her metallic gray scales.

They dine with Slovadan in the mess hall. In spite of its undignified name, the mess hall is the finest room on the reservation. The sloping, high-pitched ceiling and the abundance of raw wood give it an Alpine feel. The long walls, north and south, are lined with windows. At the west end, a gorgeous litter of Chinese Fireballs romp on a mottled canvas. At the east end, a Romanian Longhorn snoozes in its frame.

The mess hall can seat 120, but tonight there are fewer than ten. One class of interns just graduated; the other has departed for a brief vacation. Fergal and the Director are both away, and Slovadan has been left to hold the fort with a mere handful of staff. Under the Romanian Longhorn portrait, the ubiquitous and incompetent handyman and the tattooed, sweaty cook swear at each other in Romanian. Two Tibetan wizards, young and newly qualified, here for a stint of vacation work, laugh raucously, shoveling goulash into their mouths. Antonja sits by herself and reads a paperback romance novel that she got from a Muggle book club.

At the head table that night, Slovadan does most of the talking. He warns Katie, in correct and courtly English, that not all dragons are as nice as Minnie. He warns her that the Ministry is corrupt, and the Minister still has not signed the International Ban on Dueling. He warns her that the Floo Network is unreliable. He warns her that Romania is a country where children of wealthy families go to Durmstrang, which is academically excellent but morally dubious, and other children, like Slovadan and Marina, are educated at home or not at all. It is a country where English-speaking families send eleven-year-olds 1500 miles away to Scotland, because there's nothing else to do.

Katie listens attentively but appears unfazed.

After dinner they take their coffee back to the Hermitage. They sit in the summer twilight, with the windows open and the lamps unkindled, and they talk about dragons and Quidditch. They talk about living after the war. They talk about living in Romania. It is already late when he kisses her, and she relaxes into his arms. He kisses her again, with the fierce yearning that he has always tried so hard to obscure, and she pulls him down onto the thick rag rug on the floor. She flicks her wand at the fireplace, and flames shoot up. They nestle against each other in the glow. He trails kisses down the length of her scar, from the wounded eye that won't quite open to the dimple in her chin.

She is the answer. She is the missing piece, the piece that, when found, causes every other piece of the vast complicated puzzle of Charlie's life to fall into place. She is the woman that he had almost ceased to believe existed, the one who likes dragons and Quidditch, the one who can fly.

And Ron knew her all along. The twins must have, too, in all those long years of beating for Gryffindor. His parents knew her, as did Minerva McGonagall, as did Tonks, as too did the Director, who accepted her early, on the strength of a quickly quilled letter of recommendation from Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank. But not one of them said a word. Were George and Ron really so occupied with their loves and their losses and their zany business ventures that they couldn't ever, not once, pen a line to say, Charlie, Charlie, there's a girl named Katie Bell, who's in Gryffindor House and plays Chaser, who was just a little too young to be in the war, who was supposed to go to Romania and study dragons but got Imperiused and ended up in hippogriffs instead? A girl who is scarred but stocky and strong. A girl who can fly.

She says huskily, interrupting his reverie, "Charlie. Charlie, maybe we should just elope."


	8. The Bedraggled Vampire, take 2

**Chapter 8: The Bedraggled Vampire, take 2**

The moon spins around as the summer drags into the hot green lovely days of August. The rotation spins around, and Fergal is on weekend duty again. Minnie has a bad cold in the head, or possibly a mild case of dragon flu, and Katie is out in the barn helping him tend her. Charlie is trying to talk Slovadan into flying to Zagreb for the afternoon, where he and Katie are meeting Viktor Krum at the Bedraggled Vampire. Viktor Krum has had an idea about Quidditch. The Bulgarian National Team went down with the flood; half of them turned out to be Death Eaters. But things are at last starting to look up, here in the Carpathian mountains, here on the rim of the Black Sea, and with Katie, thinks Viktor, with Katie and some strategic shifting of certain players' positions, they might at last be able to field a decent team. So Charlie and Katie are going to meet him in Zagreb.

Slovadan objects that Marina is supposed to be dropping by, after her Saturday morning shift at the Ministry. Charlie tosses him a tin of Floo Powder. The Romanian Floo Network is unreliable, but Slovadan manages—to his own surprise—to reach his sister, and all is well. They have jolly good flight to Zagreb, swooping and weaving around one another, as if she's chasing a Quaffle, as if he's chasing a Snitch. Slovadan flies sedately, watching them, wryly amused.

They didn't actually elope, of course. There will be some sort of a wedding, somewhere in England, because that's where both of their families are. They have a date, but the remaining details are fuzzy. The truth is, they're pretty much leaving it to their mothers. Charlie is hard at work on the Hermitage. Katie, who has already moved to Romania, is making up for lost time with the dragons.

Charlie's lightning romance has occasioned a certain amount of ribbing over meals at the Transylvanian Dragon Research and Breeding Facility. That first Sunday night, after Fergal returned from his jaunt to the Black Sea, after Katie apparated back to England, Fergal and Slovadan and Charlie sat down to dinner. Slovadan said dryly, helping himself liberally to buttered noodles, "Well, this has been an interesting weekend."

"You didn't get stood up," said Fergal to Charlie.

"You didn't come in last night," said Slovadan pointedly.

"Hot times in the Dollhouse?" inquired Fergal, raising an eyebrow.

"Look, I didn't sleep with her, if that's what you want to know," muttered Charlie. "I mean—well—I did, but—you know—we slept." He summoned the blankets and pillows from the bed, and they slept in a heap on the rag rug in front of the fireplace. They woke up sore and sheepish, and he knew.

"Eh, and did you propose?" asked Fergal in his lilting Irish voice.

Charlie blushed.

"My God," said Fergal. "My God. This was what, your first date?"

"Well, it was actually sort of the second," pointed out Charlie.

"My God," laughed Fergal. "Charlie Weasley, you'll be the death of me. My God."

But Fergal liked Katie, and so did Slovadan, and so did the Director—and so, for that matter, did Minnie. None of them seemed terribly surprised when they announced their engagement a few weeks later.

From Hogsmeade he received a letter that read, in its entirety, "Couldn't you take the time to send me an owl saying that you're idiotically happy, or some other appropriate sentiment? Wasn't it clever of me to be twenty minutes late?"

He circled the words "idiotically happy" and sent it back by return of owl.

* * *

Viktor is waiting for them in the dusty barroom of the Bedraggled Vampire, which is still the best, worst, and only wizarding pub in the bombed-out city of Zagreb. He has taken a table for four; when Marina comes, they'll pull up another chair. He is writing, with a little stick, in a Muggle palm pilot, and frowning at it. Viktor is the only child of a family with money to burn, and he often indulges in Muggle contraptions, but he is rarely, if ever, pleased with them.

"It is stupid," he announces, in precise, heavily accented English, as the three of them stroll up. "The idea is clever, and it could be useful, if one converted it to magic. The miniature quill, which never vorks, is quite unnecessary. There is also an on-off button—quite pointless. To make it vork properly one vould need to remove the battery, enhance the legibility of the screen, and charm it to respond to vocal commands."

Charlie smiles faintly. He says, "Talk to my brother George."

"I vill do that," says Viktor Krum.

"Quidditch," murmurs Katie, gently but firmly. Katie is a woman who has her priorities straight.

Slovadan stifles a laugh. Charlie and Viktor, on the other hand, snap to attention and start talking Quidditch. That's what they're here for, after all.

Good thing Katie has her priorities straight.

Mihail brings Charlie a brandy and Viktor a firewhiskey and Slovadan a hideous local liqueur tasting of garlic and bat wings. He ogles Katie as he takes her order. Not many English witches choose to visit Croatia.

The door swings forward, and Marina walks in.

She is dressed, as she often is, in a dramaticallyupdated version of Romanian peasant costume: embroidered white blouse, embroidered black skirt,garish belt, and chunky heels. It is less conspicuous than robes when she leaves the Ministry, and it allows her to pretend that she is a Muggle if she is approached aggressively by strange wizards, something that happens more often than it ought to on the streets of Bucharest. She has masses of thick brown hair, plaited and pinned to her head. Her eyes are dark and large, her visage youthful and resolute. She is swinging a small black leather pocketbook, which is empty because it's been months since the Ministry last paid her, and a marked-up copy of the long proposed, long ignored International Ban on Dueling, which has become one of her pet projects in the long lonely hours at the Ministry's law library, a library that no one consults.

"Marina," says Charlie, gesturing. "Katie. Viktor."

Viktor leaps to his feet, takes her hand, and kisses it. Marina looks slightly intimidated, though not displeased. She probably thinks that Viktor greets every strange woman this way.

Charlie knows better.

"Good evening, Marina," says Viktor in flawless Romanian. "Your servant, Viktor Krum."

THE END

* * *

Author note: Many thanks to those who reviewed the early chapters of this story. Encouragement is always helpful! I have recently begun posting a sequel to this tale, "Autumn into Spring." 


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